


Survivor's Guilt

by Mandalorianess



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Suicide Attempt, Survivor Guilt, but not really (it's hard to explain), just be careful if it's a sensitive topic to you, she just needed a cuddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:35:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26567431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mandalorianess/pseuds/Mandalorianess
Summary: He had thought that he knew Cara quite well, better than most people at least, but now he painfully had to discover that there was a whole other side to this though, confident and witty woman, he used to know, to love if he was honest. A side where she was the exact opposite of what she let people see of herself, a side filled with uncertainty, self-hatred, and distress.He had reacted all wrong, she was trying to trust him, to let him know that she wasn’t as fine as she always pretended, maybe she was even looking for help and comfort, and he had accused her of giving up without even knowing what demons she was fighting. He shouldn’t have judged her without even knowing the whole story behind her behavior.
Relationships: Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49





	Survivor's Guilt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolfy22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfy22/gifts).



> Thank you to Wolfy22 who not only proofread this fic but also gave me the idea for the title :)

It was already dark when Din finally reached his ship. He had been buying all sorts of things to stock up his supply, to leave Nevarro again in the early morning. 

Earlier this evening he had wanted to say goodbye to Cara, but even though he was pretty sure that she was at home she hadn’t opened the door for him. He really hoped that he hadn’t offended her somehow, but he really needed to leave tomorrow. He had a new lead to the child’s kind and was supposed to meet a man, who he was told would know more about the Jedi the next evening.

When he came nearer, he could see a huddled silhouette sitting in front of the Razor Crest. Almost out of reflex he pulled his blaster, but swiftly put in back into the holster again when he recognized the person sitting there, besides her an almost empty bottle of whiskey.

“Cara?” he said softly when he was finally standing in front her, she hadn’t even noticed him coming

When Cara eventually looked up her eyes were glassy and angrily red, her cheeks still slightly wet from previous tears, dark circles gracing her eyes.

“I’m so sorry” she sniffed, rubbing her hand heedlessly over her face.

Din wasn’t quite sure what she was talking about, neither did he know what could possibly have put her in such distress. He had never seen her like this.

“What are you sorry for, what happened?” he asked, kneeling in front of her, slightly touching her thigh.

“I…” she stopped, suddenly haunted by a violent hiccup.

“I…puked against…your ship,” she said under hiccups.

Well, that could not be the reason why she sat here on the ground, totally drunk, and drowned in tears.

“Come on Cara, get up,” he said harsher than he had intended to, but not without helping her to get up. He was quite certain that she probably wouldn’t have made it without his help. In fact, Cara made a rough-and-ready attempt to get up, while she let herself be pulled up onto her feet. Hastily, she reached for the whiskey bottle beside her. It was beyond Din how she could even think drinking more of that stuff would be a good idea right now. When he finally lowered the ramp of his ship, Cara could stand on her own again, almost steadily.  
As expected, she refused his help for going up the ramp, but let herself sink to the floor as soon as she had entered the ship, drinking another sip of whiskey without even flinching.

“I think you really had enough” Din said taken the bottle from her with gently but decisive grip.

“What happened?” he asked placing himself beside her, but she wasn’t reacting

***

Like from far away she heard Din’s voice asking her what happened, but she wasn’t able to respond.

Like every year on this day, she was trapped in her memories. Memories of how she lost her home, her family, her friends, her planet, her life like it used to be before the destruction of Alderaan, this day she had lost everything.

People had told her that her pain and grief would fade away with time and partly they were right. Now, years later she had days, where she didn’t even think about Alderaan, there were days, where she didn’t miss all the people she had lost. But on the anniversary? On the anniversary it was the opposite, with each year her distress grew, the guilt of surviving another year while so many people had lost their lives, not just through the destruction of her home planet, but through out the whole war. The guilt of sometimes not even thinking about it anymore, the guilt of not only being alive but sometimes even being happy.

“Cara” She heard his voice again, repeating her name for maybe the 5th time, dull and hollow. She felt so numb, unable to move unable to speak, so sad, she couldn’t even cry anymore.

Only when he roughly grabbed her by her shoulders she broke out of her trance  
.  
“Cara, please tell me what happened,” said his soft, husky voice, way more gentle than she deserved. She loved this voice, his voice, loved it even more when it wasn’t modulated by his helmet, in the dark, when their sweaty bodies moved with pleasure, so in sync as if they were one

“Alderaan” she mumbled, incapable to say more than this single word, but it was so much more than just Alderaan, it was the memories of her family, her friends, the Alderaanien traditions she mostly used to hate, even the memories of the previous anniversaries, it all was so damn painful, worse than every blaster shot, worse than any physical torture could ever be to her.

***

It took him a few seconds to understand what she was talking about until he realized that today must be the anniversary of the destruction of Alderaan, he instantly felt sorry. He couldn’t even imagine what it felt like to lose everything at once. For sure he had lost his parents but somehow that felt different, maybe because he instantly had his mandalorian buir who took care of him, but Cara? He was sure, that she had nobody to be there for her. 

“I’m so sorry,” he said “Is there anything I can do for you?” He felt dumb, like his words were not even nearly dignifying her pain, her grief, her loss. They were only some meaningless set phrases people used when they didn’t know how to handle another person’s distress, and yet they were the only words that felt passably appropriate.

“Do you have a bathtub?” she said, finally looking at him with this big, dark, tear afflicted eyes. “And maybe some more of this” she continued, grabbing the bottle of whiskey, and taking the last sip.

“Sorry I don’t have booze on my ship” he said, hoping she wouldn’t detect the lie in his voice, but he was fairly certain that she would drink herself to death, or at least into a serious alcohol intoxication if he gave her more booze. “But I do have a bathtub” he swiftly continued when he saw her desperately disappointed expression. 

In fact, he had a bathtub in his ship, one of the previous owners of the Razor Crest must have had a liability to extravagance. He normally had used the bathtub as an extended storage room, which was probably the reason Cara hadn’t realized it when she had been on the crest.

Recently, Din had discovered that his little green monster loved to play in the water, and he had decluttered and cleaned the tub for him.

While he ran Cara a bath, he asked himself if it was a good idea to leave her alone in the bathtub in her fairly drunk condition, but what else should he have done? Let her just sit there, crying herself to dehydration? He decided that he would just regularly check on her, by asking if she was okay trough the closed bathroom door, even though he knew she would hate it and call it unnecessary worries.

***

_“Lieutenant Dune?” she heard the empathic voice of Dr. May, a middle-aged woman, maybe ten years older than her but undeniably beautiful.  
She hated these mandatory therapy sessions after a failed, or not-as-planed mission, they were totally unnecessary, there was no time for them in her opinion. There were more important things for her to do than to talk to a beautiful lady about her feelings, she hated it._

_“Lieutenant Dune, why didn’t you swim? Your comrades told me you were normally a good swimmer and could have made it out of this stream in the river” Dr. May specified her question that she had asked several times before._

_Yes…why didn’t she swim?_

_“I told you, I don’t know” she heard herself answer, almost automatically; it was her basic answer to almost every question she was asked in these sessions._

How ironic, her subconscious showed her how she had to sit there on an admittedly comfortable armchair, after the events of the first anniversary of this horrible, horrible day. 

_All of a sudden, the shock wave of an explosion tossed her into the icy water of the steady river beside her.  
The precipitate cold around her took her breath for a moment and a few seconds elapsed until her instincts finally awoke. Hastily she swam toward the riverside. _

_She felt the welcoming pull of a maelstrom, still weak enough for her to escape it, but why should she?  
Suddenly all her survival instincts seemed to die, why shouldn’t they, there was no reason other than revenge for her to stay alive. Why shouldn’t she follow the maelstrom’s inviting call? _

_She never wanted to become a person full of revenge, she always had believed in forgiveness, but right now she was on her best way to become this bitter, revenge filled person, she had never wanted to be. She had killed so many people for the Republic this last year, how different was she still from those people she fought?_

_She made one last swim stroke until she let herself be tucked under the water surface, following the stream right into the maelstrom, pulling her deeper and deeper into the dark and freezing cold. She expected some sort of panic to overcome her once she became dizzy from the lack of oxygen, but it never came._

She knew she needed to come out of the water surrounding her, but she couldn’t, her body was simply not following the orders of these rational thoughts. Her body was under the control of her slightly dizzy subconscious telling her to keep herself under the water.

Through the water around her, a dull noise made her eyes flutter open. Through the slightly moving water she saw Dins blurry outlines hovering over her.  
Even though she knew what was about to happen she still startled when he roughly grabbed her by her shoulders to pull her upper body out of the clear and warm liquid, causing her to inhale some of it.

She instantly started coughing and panting for air, when the cold air of the room hit her, in contrast to the almost hot water. She hadn’t even realized how desperately her body needed oxygen.

“Cara, what are you doing?” she heard Dins shocked, maybe even reproachful voice. She must have really scared him when he wasn’t even apologizing for coming into the bathroom while she was naked, not that she cared right now.

“You tried to drown yourself in the bathtub,” He said, still holding her by her shoulders, it wasn’t a question, more of an accusation.

“No, I didn’t” she contradicted when she finally caught her breath. “I was taking a bath”

“I never took a bath before, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what it’s supposed to look like” He answered exhaling sharply while he finally let go of her shoulders to get her a towel.

“Nothing would have happened, as soon as I would have lost consciousness my body would have come up to the water surface, and start to breathe again” She argued while she unsteadily tried to get out of the bathtub.  
“Nothing would have happened” she repeated bitterly when Din finally helped her out and wrapped her into the soft white towel.

“So, you admit it?” he asked, feeling instantly that it wasn't the right thing to say. He was seeing her in a weak and vulnerable moment and still couldn’t keep himself from accusing her instead of being happy that indeed nothing had happened. All of this just because he couldn’t imagine losing her, he suddenly felt so selfish.

“I didn’t try to drown myself” she answered him back, wrapping the towel tighter around her freezing body “I just didn’t fight it either” she mumbled, so silent Din almost didn’t hear it, but he did. 

He had thought that he knew Cara quite well, better than most people at least, but now he painfully had to discover that there was a whole other side to this though, confident and witty woman, he used to know, to love if he was honest. A side where she was the exact opposite of what she let people see of herself, a side filled with uncertainty, self-hatred, and distress.

He had reacted all wrong, she was trying to trust him, to let him know that she wasn’t as fine as she always pretended, maybe she was even looking for help and comfort, and he had accused her of giving up without even knowing what demons she was fighting. He shouldn’t have judged her without even knowing the whole story behind her behavior. 

“I’m sorry” he mumbled, looking down “I had no right to talk to you like that, I don’t know what you are going through, but I really meant it when I asked you if there is anything I can do” when he finally looked up Cara’s eyes were glassy with tears again.

Did, he say something wrong again?

Before he could further evaluate his words the little one waddled into the bathroom stretching his arms into Cara’s direction, signalizing her that he wanted her to pick him up. Holding her towel with one hand she did as he wished, causing the kid to coo happily.

Without saying a word or even looking back at him she left the bathroom along with the little one cuddle against her chest. 

He sighed, why did she even come here if she didn’t want to talk to him?  
He guessed he just had to try to be there for her, as a friend…he didn’t know much about friendship, he wasn’t even sure if he and Cara could be considered as friends. On the one hand, they were more than friends, having sex wasn’t a normal friendship thing, right? But on the other hand, he just had to realize that he didn’t really know anything about Cara. She probably knew a lot more about him than he did about her, which now that he thought about it was odd, normally he was the one, people didn’t know anything about.  
But if he was honest with himself maybe that wasn’t only because he wanted to keep things private, but also because he didn’t really have anyone to tell something about himself, until he met Cara. She was always there for him listening, cheering him up by mocking him in this friendly and funny way. That was something friends did, wasn’t it? Being there for each other. It seemed to be harder than it looked, because Cara somehow always knew how to be there for him, she knew what he needed when he didn’t even know it himself, but he had no idea what he was supposed to do to comfort her.

He remembered Cara’s beloved holo-movies he had watched in hyperspace out of boredom because she had forgotten them in his ship. Not that he would ever admit it, but he somehow had caught himself to find them quite entertaining. 

In said holo-movies they always drank red wine together when someone was sad, but that wasn’t really an option since Cara was already really drunk and aside from that the sad character always started to cry even more after drinking the first glass of red wine.  
So, he had to resort back to a scene where a little boy had been sad, his mother had given him hot chocolate and somehow, he wasn’t as sad after that. Din didn’t quite understand how a simple drink could make someone feel better, but he assumed that it would be worth a try. 

It was a solid plan, except that he neither had chocolate nor cocoa powder. He sighed; he was a terrible friend.

He silently walked through his ship, eventually finding her lying in his bunk, the little one tightly snuggled against her.

“I wanted to make you hot chocolate but…” he stopped talking when he realized that both, she and the kid were sound asleep.

 _‘Turns out all she needed was someone to hug her, to cuddle her to sleep and to be by her side, not leaving her’_ He thought by himself. It seemed like his little green son knew a lot more about being there for someone than he did. 

Without hesitation, he took off his armor and clothes except for his boxers, just when he wanted to put on his helmet again, which he had removed take of his shirt, he hesitated, finally setting it back onto the floor to the rest of his armor.

Cara had tried to show him that she trusted him and now it was his turn to show her how much he trusted her.

Cara and the kid were lying in his bunk with their faces to the wall. He really trusted her not to look at him once she realized that he wasn’t wearing his helmet and the little one was family, there was no danger here for him to lose his honor as a Mandalorian.

When he laid himself onto the small remaining space behind her, she instantly snuggled herself against him, pulling the kid with her.  
Din wasn’t sure if she was awake or if it was some kind of reflex, but he for sure knew that he had finally done the right thing.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it. As always I'm grateful for every comment and open to any critique :)


End file.
